Friday, Feb 03, 2012
Gulf News
Abu Dhabi Etisalat DB Telecom India (EDB), etisalat’s operation in India which was previously known as Swan Telecom, has lost its spectrum licence after the Supreme Court of India issued a judgment cancelling all 122 spectrum licences granted to all eight operators in 2008.
“The details of the judgment have not yet been released,” etisalat said in a statement yesterday.
The order also imposes a fine on all licensees who sold equity to foreign investors after issuance of the licences. The Supreme Court’s decision to cancel the licences was made on the ground that they were issued in a “totally arbitrary and unconstitutional” manner by former Indian tele-com minister A. Raja, the Times of India reported.
“Once a copy of the decision is received, etisalat will work closely with EDB’s management and legal counsel to understand the judgment, its ramifications on the operations of EDB, particularly its customers and employees as well as its right to a review of the Supreme Court’s decision,” etisalat said in its statement.
“The Supreme Court decision relates to events that occurred in January 2008, well before December 2008 when etisalat invested in Swan,” etisalat added.
No involvement
“Etisalat has no knowledge of what occurred in the licence application process for Swan, far less did it have any involvement. The lic-ence applications were entirely conducted by the promoters and their associates who subsequently marketed the Swan investment opportunity to etisalat through a well-known international investment bank.”
Matthew Reed, a telecoms analyst with consultancy Informa Telecoms and Media, said that the ruling revoking the licences is “a further blow for etisalat in India and the latest in a series of difficulties that etisalat has experienced in the country.”
“My understanding is that etisalat had held back from a major rollout in India because of the operational challenges there as well as the uncertainty created by the legal problems that have emerged over the past year or more relating to the 2008 licences,” he told Gulf News.
According to Informa Telecom and Media’s research etisalat had 1.5 million mobile subscriptions at end of the third quarter of 2011, a small part of the total Indian mobile market of about 856 million in the same period.
By Samia Badih ?Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
